Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 8, between lines 13 and 14, to insert the following: “Report on rent tax credit

4. The Minister shall, within one month of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on the rent tax credit operating in the absence of a cap on rents, making a direct comparison between the amount of the credit and rent increases across the State for each year that the credit has been in operation.”.

This is another area where the Minister broke a personal promise he made to the electorate. I am sure he will acknowledge that if he wants to be honest with the House tonight. He made a commitment that the renter's tax credit would increase by €100 each year. In his first budget, he decided to break that promise to the people. It is the wrong decision but there is a wider issue in relation to the renter's tax credit.

When I argued for the introduction of the renter's tax credit and convinced Government there was a real issue in that its housing policy had resulted in runaway rents and had put huge pressure on individuals, the argument I heard from the Minister's party and from Fianna Fáil was that if you reintroduce the renter's tax credit, it would end up in the pockets of landlords. There was merit to that argument. The Commission on Taxation and Welfare looked at the old renter's tax credit, which was introduced in the 1980s and only phased out a number of years ago. The argument for its introduction at that time was that there was pressure on elderly persons who were renting. The commission found that it ended up pushing up rents, with the benefit ending up in the pockets in the landlords, so there was merit to that argument. That is why, when I argued for the renter's tax credit, I always made it clear that a two-pronged approach had to be adopted. A renter's tax credit needed to be introduced but there also needed to be a ban on rent increases. Without a ban on rent increases, all you are doing is putting more profit in landlords' pockets because that is where it ends up.

The statistics show that to be the case. We do not even have to go back to 2020 or 2021, when it was introduced. If we compare the first quarter of this year with the last quarter of 2023, we will see that rents increased by a sum in excess of the renter's tax credit. If the Government had banned rent increases at the end of 2023, without even introducing a tax credit, tenants would be better off today than they are with the renter's tax credit. That is why this amendment looks at the real cost of the renter's tax credit with reference to the increase in rents.

I am the person who convinced the Government to introduce the renter's tax credit but it made a half-arsed job of it because it only introduced half of the policy. Perhaps that was by design because, in introducing only half the policy, the Government transferred taxpayers' money into the pockets of landlords. Landlords will benefit again next year as the result of what one of the professors called the stupidest tax measure in the history of the State. The Government increased tax credits for landlords and, as a result, one in four of those eligible for that credit, over 40,000 landlords, will not pay a penny in tax. It is amazing. Under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, we have tens of thousands of landlords who do not pay a penny in tax because of all of the tax incentives. The Government introduced more incentives, even though all of its advisers said that it was not the right thing to do, that a lot of landlords were not even paying any tax and that this was not the reason landlords were selling up, as they were selling up because prices had gone through the roof, which was obviously a consequence of the Government's own policy. Over and over again, they argued against the introduction of this measure but the Government introduced it anyway.

Let us go back to tenants. Tenants are being fleeced left, right and centre. I do not know where the endpoint is. On some occasions, Government Ministers have been embarrassed into saying that rents should actually decrease. I am not sure if that is the Minister's position. Does he want to see rents come down? There is no policy here. The Government has no plan to do that but it is introducing new legislation to allow rents to increase every six years, even in rent pressure zones.

This is about identifying that the measure that was introduced, which I campaigned on for a number of years before the Government eventually acceded to half of it, is not working because the Government only introduced half of the measure and that rents are increasing at a faster rate than the benefit of the credit itself. There is a requirement to increase the renter's tax credit, something the Minister personally promised the people he would do. Lo and behold, he is now the Minister for Finance and the Tánaiste and, if everything goes according to his plan, he will be Taoiseach. In addition to the Minister's promises in respect of tax cuts, a childcare plan within 100 days and a reduction in student fees, he is also breaking this promise to the 300,000 renters out there.

8 o’clock

They are not getting the €100 that Simon promised them because the Government has decided to put €2.5 billion into the pockets of developers, landlords and investors instead. They are the priorities the Government has chosen in this budget. They are the wrong priorities and that is why I propose this amendment.

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